Video & interviews of anarchists in the Spanish Revolution

Back in 1986 Granada did a fantastic 6 part documentary on the Spanish Civil War.  Each episode was an hour long and based around news reel footage from the time (much of it shot by anarchist film crews) and interviews with surviving participants.  The six episodes are now up on youtube Google video, if you’ve not seen them I highly recommend them.

Back in 1986 Granada did a fantastic 6 part documentary on the Spanish Civil War.  Each episode was an hour long and based around news reel footage from the time (much of it shot by anarchist film crews) and interviews with surviving participants.  The six episodes are now up on youtube Google video, if you’ve not seen them I highly recommend them.

Its a while since I watched them but from memory the best is episode 5  ‘Inside the revolution’ which tells the story of the anarchist led revolution in the republican zone and the communist conter-revolution that eventually crushed it.  The interviews are scatted with sound bytes from participants that (then 40 years later) capture the atmosphere at the time.  The (then) Young Communist Teresa Pamies has some of the best including, talking about womens liberation during the revolution,  ‘At that time to be a women, to be young, was the ultimate‘.  By far the hardest sequence to watch is the interview with some of the anarchists who were in the port of Valencia on the night before it fell at the end of the war about seeing the fires of the fascist army camped all around and many of their comrades deciding to shoot themselves rather than fall into fascist hands.

I’ve embedded episode 5 below (the still you see is probably Federica Montseny being interviewed) , you’ll find the rest of the episodes at google video youtube if you go to episode 1 and browse the right hand column.

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Interviewees: Teresa Pamies (Young Communist), Josep Costa (Anarchist), Federica Montseny (Anarchist Leader), Eduardo Pons … Read morePrades (Anarchist Youth), Marcel Giro (Factory Owner’s Son), Benigno Castaner (Anarchist Carpenter), Placido Castaner (Anarchist Teacher), Emilio Bernuz (Anarchist Peasant), Enrique Lister (Communist Commander), Josep Tarradellas (Prime Minister of Catalonia), Pere Ardiaca (Communist Official), Socrates Gomez (Socialist), Bill Bailey (American Volunteer (Communist)), Frank Deegan (English Volunteer (Communist)), Enriqueta Garcia Cervera (Switchboard Operator), Juan Manuel Molina (Anarchist Defence Under-Secretary (Catalonia)), Julian Gorkin (POUM Executive).

I may never get around to it but I’d like to put together edited highlights from all six episodes.

WORDS Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )